GD: Garegga ranking system

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Guardians Knight
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GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by Guardians Knight »

Ok so its a well known fact that Raizing have this nasty ranking system in place that rodgers you sideways if you collect too many power ups.

However I'd like to talk about what you can do to keep it down. I know its been discussed in the strat for this game, but im not convinced that collecting options raises your rank.

I say this cos i noticed while playing that as long as you keep your main gun at a fairly low power you can have all the options and the game stays fairly sedate, but strangly i discovered, the more you shoot down with your options the more medals it seems to give you.

Maybe im totally off the mark here but thats just my observations, perhaps people could confirm or deny my suspicions?
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by Randorama »

Guardians Knight wrote:Ok so its a well known fact that Raizing have this nasty ranking system in place that rodgers you sideways if you collect too many power ups.

However I'd like to talk about what you can do to keep it down. I know its been discussed in the strat for this game, but im not convinced that collecting options raises your rank.

I say this cos i noticed while playing that as long as you keep your main gun at a fairly low power you can have all the options and the game stays fairly sedate, but strangly i discovered, the more you shoot down with your options the more medals it seems to give you.

Maybe im totally off the mark here but thats just my observations, perhaps people could confirm or deny my suspicions?
Hm, the rank issue's not very clear in the guide, sadly :?

however: the rank increase is based on how many shots you shoot, and what type of them. In this way:

The central shot of every plane is worth +3 rank points
the other main shots +1
shots from options +2

If you don't max out your main gun, you'll get: one piercing shot plus two side shots (3+1+1=5 rank points) per tap, maxed out is 8 (on some ships 11, since you get two extra piercing shots).Options, on the other hand, give 2x4=8 points if you have all 4 of them. If you are at level 4 shot and two options, for instance, you'll get 5 rank points for the main shot and 4 for the options shot, just one more point than a main shot alone at full power (i.e. 5+4=9 pts. vs 8 pts. ), with the difference that two options cover better and are more useful than a maxed out shot.
Another example: if you use a specific trick (can't recall which one) you can get a level 6 main shot (and not 5), which is worth 11 rank points per shot. The same increase is a level 4 main shot, but with 3 options,which are more useful, frankly.

Also, if you max out your main shot and take other power ups, the rank increase should be big (+3 small power ups and +20 big ones i think), option power-ups should be always +1. Finally, medals should appear every 9 aerial enemies or so, of course with options you shoot more stuff and thus they can appear more often.

Finally: the rank increase works in this way: every time you shoot something, you add points to your rank value. Rank increase every time you arrive to a given value:

RANK POINTS/ RANK EXTEND

in our first example, if you shoot 3 times with an overall equivalent of 9 points (level 4 main gun, two options), after shooting five times you get 45 points.
The first rank level is reached at 10k, so in this case you would get:

45/10k

which means that you need to get 9,955 points more to get the new rank level. Once you reach that level, the numerator value is resetted and the denominator value is halved: this means that the next level is triggered at 5k, then 2,5k, etc. When you die, the numerator value is reduced according to the number of remaining lives: i.e. if you'r down to your last life, it's reduced to 1/8, 1/4 to your second-to-last, etc. In the above case, if you die and are at your last life, you'd go to:

(45/8=5 )/10k

If you trigger a rank level, you can't go back to the precedent rank level, i.e. once you get past the first 10k and switch to the first rank level, you will get to next rank level at 5k, regardless of the number of deaths.

Hope it helps, if not please ask :?
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by Randorama »

Guardians Knight wrote:Ok so its a well known fact that Raizing have this nasty ranking system in place that rodgers you sideways if you collect too many power ups.

However I'd like to talk about what you can do to keep it down. I know its been discussed in the strat for this game, but im not convinced that collecting options raises your rank.

I say this cos i noticed while playing that as long as you keep your main gun at a fairly low power you can have all the options and the game stays fairly sedate, but strangly i discovered, the more you shoot down with your options the more medals it seems to give you.

Maybe im totally off the mark here but thats just my observations, perhaps people could confirm or deny my suspicions?
Hm, the rank issue's not very clear in the guide, sadly :?

however: the rank increase is based on how many shots you shoot, and what type of them. In this way:

The central shot of every plane is worth +3 rank points
the other main shots +1
shots from options +2

If you don't max out your main gun, you'll get: one piercing shot plus two side shots (3+1+1=5 rank points) per tap, maxed out is 8 (on some ships 11, since you get two extra piercing shots).Options, on the other hand, give 2x4=8 points if you have all 4 of them. If you are at level 4 shot and two options, for instance, you'll get 5 rank points for the main shot and 4 for the options shot, just one more point than a main shot alone at full power (i.e. 5+4=9 pts. vs 8 pts. ), with the difference that two options cover better and are more useful than a maxed out shot.
Another example: if you use a specific trick (can't recall which one) you can get a level 6 main shot (and not 5), which is worth 11 rank points per shot. The same increase is a level 4 main shot, but with 3 options,which are more useful, frankly.

Also, if you max out your main shot and take other power ups, the rank increase should be big (+3 small power ups and +20 big ones i think), option power-ups should be always +1. Finally, medals should appear every 9 aerial enemies or so, of course with options you shoot more stuff and thus they can appear more often.

Finally: the rank increase works in this way: every time you shoot something, you add points to your rank value. Rank increase every time you arrive to a given value:

RANK POINTS/ RANK EXTEND

in our first example, if you shoot 3 times with an overall equivalent of 9 points (level 4 main gun, two options), after shooting five times you get 45 points.
The first rank level is reached at 10k, so in this case you would get:

45/10k

which means that you need to get 9,955 points more to get the new rank level. Once you reach that level, the numerator value is resetted and the denominator value is halved: this means that the next level is triggered at 5k, then 2,5k, etc. When you die, the numerator value is reduced according to the number of remaining lives: i.e. if you'r down to your last life, it's reduced to 1/8, 1/4 to your second-to-last, etc. In the above case, if you die and are at your last life, you'd go to:

(45/8=5 )/10k

If you trigger a rank level, you can't go back to the precedent rank level, i.e. once you get past the first 10k and switch to the first rank level, you will get to next rank level at 5k, regardless of the number of deaths.

Hope it helps, if not please ask :?
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Guardians Knight
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Post by Guardians Knight »

so everytime you shoot the rank is counting up to 10k (to begin with). it doesn't matter if you dont hit anything at all, all that counts is shots fired? So it's a bad idea to just hold autofire the whole time when there's nothing about?
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Post by Randorama »

Guardians Knight wrote:so everytime you shoot the rank is counting up to 10k (to begin with). it doesn't matter if you dont hit anything at all, all that counts is shots fired? So it's a bad idea to just hold autofire the whole time when there's nothing about?
yeh, this feature comes from the first Darius, actually. When there's nothing to shoot at (difficult though), it's better if you don't shoot. except for a few spots on first and second stages though, it's pretty pointless not to shoot, except after the bosses or in places with a few enemies (i.e. just shoot at them instead of going full auto).

What's extremely cheaty to use is the built-in overclocked autofire.Basically, if you tap more or less quickly and then hold down the button, the game will record your firing speed and use it as a standard firerate.This means that if you shoot 5 very quick bullets and then an hole in the stream, the game will record: 1-2-3-4-5-pause-1-2-3-4-5 etc. Go at the default speed except for points where you know you will need more firepower, since that's the fastest method to have rank increase :?
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Post by Guardians Knight »

cheers mate, that's been very helpful. I've been working on milking the first two stages while trying not to die. I can get almost 1m now altho the level 2 boss is sometimes hard work esp. when using normal hitbox
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Post by Randorama »

uhm, you have to avoid to milk if you want to go anywhere... also, do you know the flamingoes trick at the beginning of the second stage?in case i think Icarus has the videos on his site has them (or Jigsawman's ftp too, i think). Hmmm, i think i should steal his guide and put it in order, since he seems to have disappeared :?
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Post by Guardians Knight »

yeah i know the flamingos trick.

I watched Icarus' full video and noticed he bombs a lot but seems to only use a little bit and not a full bomb. Is it possible to bomb without using your full stock cos he always seemed to have a few bullets left even when he bombed all the time.
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Post by Randorama »

Of course i know about the "small bombs" usage :wink: also, you can bomb aerial enemies, you will get the points for destruction AND the points for collision, this means that when he bombs on planes during stage 2, he gets some extra points.Same thing goes for scenery, not only you get hidden medals, but also points for destroying them (Stage 3 and 4 are full of this scenery-based points, also scene 5!).
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Post by Guardians Knight »

so erm how do you do it? the small bomb
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Post by Rastan78 »

It happens when you hit the bomb button but you don't have any large bomb icons in the bottom corner, you just have the small bullets.

If you have complete bombs in stock, they get used up first. What a lot of Garegga players do is use up their bombs and just keep bombing in little bursts each time they collect just a few small bullet icons.
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Post by samu »

The central shot of every plane is worth +3 rank points
the other main shots +1
shots from options +2
Actually the guide says rank increases by 3 for every piercing shot you fire. But it's followed by a question mark. So I'm not sure if that means the guide writer was not sure about this fact or something.
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Post by Icarus »

Randorama wrote:Hmmm, i think i should steal his guide and put it in order, since he seems to have disappeared :?
Oi! Don't you dare! I'm on my holiday at the moment, and will be back on Saturday - typing this on my Powerbook in Venice, I love wireless internet hotspots - and as soon as I get back, I'll repost the Garegga ST in it's entirety. I have vids from the first three stages, plus little clips from the first five for the scoring hotspots and tricks, with more to add. Please stay patient.
Randorama wrote:in case i think Icarus has the videos on his site has them
Okay, vidlist (as current on my fileserver):
Stage 1 - collecting the tankbullets (DIVX - 1.1MB)
Stage 1 - Golden Bat Replay (DIVX - 18MB)
Stage 2 - 1.8mil from the birds (DIVX - 2.6MB)
Stage 2 - Golden Bat Replay (DIVX - 26MB)
Stage 3 - Golden Bat Replay (DIVX - 31MB)
Guardians Knight wrote:I say this cos i noticed while playing that as long as you keep your main gun at a fairly low power you can have all the options and the game stays fairly sedate, but strangly i discovered, the more you shoot down with your options the more medals it seems to give you.
That's actually wrong. Each bullet fired by your ship is worth +1, penetrative bullets (read: Wild Snail and Grasshopper's "passthru" bullets, but not Gain's Option shots) are worth about +3, bullets fired from your Options are worth +2 and from Special Formations, +4.

(I think that's correct, taken from Rando's edit from the original ST)

I don't really care for the numerical data. But to summarise the best weapons strategy:

- don't collect too many Options (one is enough for most ships, and sometimes you don't need one at all)
- keep your weapon levels low - the less bullets your ship fires per wave, the better (for example, Wild Snail at one less than max power fires three bullets: two standard plus one penetrative; while a max powered Snail fires four: two standard plus two penetrative. aim to keep the Snail at one less than max, for firepower strenght and to slow the rate of rank increase)
- try not to increase your rapid fire rate until late in the game

As for "the more you shoot down with your options the more medals it seems to give you", that's wrong as well. Medals are generally released by flying enemies and scenery destruction, and in the exception, by the flying carriers in the Cloud stage, stage 5. The items released are predetermined by a set order:

1: small shot powerup
2: medal
3: small shot powerup
4: medal
5: option (the first five repeat 4 times, then...)
6: small shot powerup
7: medal
8: small shot powerup
9: medal
10: large shot powerup (then back to the top)

This order only applies to flying enemies, and is not affected by the type of weapon used to destroy said enemy.

EDIT: Actually, I should elaborate on that. This order applies to all "flying" enemies, even the ones that aren't airborne, like the big group of planes before the Stage 3 boss.

EDIT 2: I'll elaborate even further (due to my stupidity). An item is released for every FIVE airborne enemies you destroy. However, non-airborne "flying" enemies (such as those near the end of Stage 3) will ALWAYS release an item. Both types will follow the item release chart posted above.

The order also carries over to each credit: say for example you ended your credit with a medal released at (point 9) of the item order. Your first item on your next credit will be a large shot powerup (point 10). The only way to reset this order is to restart the PCB (for PCB/emulation players) or to open the Options screen on the Saturn version.
samu wrote:Actually the guide says rank increases by 3 for every piercing shot you fire. But it's followed by a question mark. So I'm not sure if that means the guide writer was not sure about this fact or something.
Actually, I would say that is correct. Ships without penetrative bullets have a bit of an easier time when it comes to rank control, but a harder time surviving due to lack of firepower. I think. ;)

Don't quote me on that by the way.
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Post by Guardians Knight »

cheers for the info icarus. btw the links dont work properly they just link to your site where there is no garegga replays
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Post by Icarus »

Right-click and Save File As. If you left-click 'em, it just opens up a new window which redirects to the homepage, as I've enabled a (albeit limited) anti-linking widget on my fileserver. Right-click-saving works though.

All links are tested and confirmed to be working (got all five replays test-saved to the Powerbook via this method).
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Post by Vincere »

Are you guys 100% sure that the rank doesn't increase from stage 6? I have some serious doubts. If I believe there was no ranking effect, I play shooting all the time, maximising my shot power and using the 4 options.

The thing I can't get is that during the stage, it becomes harder and harder. The beginning of the stage which is not easy but not that hard goes to the middle which is a living bullet hell. I'm am sure that all the options, ammo and shoot that I take are affecting the rank because you can't have in the same level "medium/hard" parts with "Committing suicide cause it's too hard" parts.
Of course a stage gets harder in the end, but I "smell" that there is something terribly wrong with the difficulty.
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Post by BulletMagnet »

Check the main ST, the guide there contains just about everything you need to know about the way rank works.

To answer your immediate question, the stage you're on doesn't affect how fast the rank goes up: it is true, however, that the farther in you get, the longer the rank's been going up and the tougher it'll be, but that kind of goes without saying. Check the ST guide for any other info you need: it's a long read, but covers almost everything.
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Post by Vincere »

I already checked that, but thanks. Still, I have a hard time believing that the rank stops at stage 6...
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Post by BulletMagnet »

Vincere wrote:I have a hard time believing that the rank stops at stage 6...
Where does it say that? I think you misread something Icarus said about stopping rank control when you get to stage 6: what he said was, by the time you get to stage 6, you'll need lots of firepower to stay alive, so you'll probably want to forget the whole "limiting weapons" thing by then. Because of this, he says that it's especially important to get by with as little as possible in the early stages, when things aren't as tough, so you can ignore the rank control methods more frequently later on, when you need to bulk up and blast everything. Rank keeps increasing throughout the whole game, but since controlling the rank is more difficult later on, you'll want to do as much as possible before stage 6, because by then you'll likely be blasted to smithereens if you try it there.
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Post by zaphod »

Pretty much everything you do increases rank.

Every shot fired, every powerup collected, every enemy killed, even every ITEM THE FIRE BUTTON IS PRESSED (manual rapid fire raises the rank faster, i think but this is oot confirmed), activating a special option, etc.

There are particularly large boosts for collecting powerups after your power is maxed.

ONly 3 things decreae rank.

1) death. the less lives yo uhaeve in stock, the biger the ran decrease.
2) missing a MAX medal. you can do wthis without loosign your medal chain if you are clever. You can miss a large number of medals, and as long as you collect a ful valeu one after the ones you missed left the scree and BEFORE blastign an enemy that releases a medal, your chain is saved.
3) continuuing. which we won't talk about because it's forbidden. lol but this is the onyl thing that will acaully decrease tehe rank level after it ratchets p i think.

The game is considered nearly impossible, if not completely impossible to single life clear because of how the rank system works. in fact, because the rank ever goes down tryig to single life clear it is conterproductive to beating the game at all.if you can one lfie i til yo'uve maxed the rank expect to get pwned repeatedly after your first death, because you wil be without forepower when you need it.
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Post by Vincere »

Hum, I already knew all that zaphod but thanks for the noobs that read this. It may help.

Otherwise Bullet, I effectively misread some parts because I wasn't aware that the rank keeps going on above stage 5. Thanks.
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Post by Twiddle »

zaphod wrote: 2) missing a MAX medal. you can do wthis without loosign your medal chain if you are clever. You can miss a large number of medals, and as long as you collect a ful valeu one after the ones you missed left the scree and BEFORE blastign an enemy that releases a medal, your chain is saved.
3) continuuing. which we won't talk about because it's forbidden. lol but this is the onyl thing that will acaully decrease tehe rank level after it ratchets p i think.
False, and false.
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Post by BulletMagnet »

You might want to check the revamped rank section in the Garegga ST, zaphod. ;)
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by esreveR »

Hey all, I have a question.

I've managed to get through Garegga on only one life once, and I was wondering if that would provide any sort of scoring advantages in itself, or if it's better to suicide at specific places. I never got the score, so I wouldn't know.
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by BER »

esreveR wrote:Hey all, I have a question.

I've managed to get through Garegga on only one life once, and I was wondering if that would provide any sort of scoring advantages in itself, or if it's better to suicide at specific places. I never got the score, so I wouldn't know.
For high scoring, it's better to suicide at specific places. Whenever you die, you gain 20 small special weapon bullets. Then you can use your special weapon to destroy some scenery for medals, milk certain bosses, pester some flamingos some more, or any other fancy scoring tricks that you would otherwise not be able to do without any special weapon bullets in stock.

For example, let's say you're KET playing as Chitta, and you're about to face stage 2's Madball with one spare life and a little more than 20 small special weapon bullets. Destroying all of Madball's outer turrets requires a little more than 40 small special weapon bullets in all, though. And destroying all those turrets is worth a million points. What do you do: (1) shrug and defeat the boss as usual or (2) weaken the boss with your bomber and your suicide explosion and then finish off the turrets with the bomber you get upon respawning?

Now let's say you somehow managed to clear out all those outer turrets. You have no special weapon bullets, but you have a spare life. But because you can't use your bomber, you can't collect all those pretty medals from bombing the railway at the beginning of stage 3. What do you do: (1) defeat the boss as usual and sulk over all those medals you can't release in stage 3 or (2) suicide near the very end of the boss battle, finish the fight with your shots, and collect those medals at the beginning of stage 3?

(The obvious answers: http://zoome.jp/garelab/diary/31 starting at ~5:27)
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by Plasmo »

One lifing Garegga is absolutely pointless if you want to score. It's all about strategical suicides, bombing the right places, milking bosses and destroying enemies with the right shot.
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by BulletMagnet »

Plasmo wrote:One lifing Garegga is absolutely pointless if you want to score.
It's still a darn impressive achievement in and of itself, though.
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by xris »

I dunno.. Saying you 1LC Garegga without understanding what's up, and asking if Ibara has invincibility in the same day. Seems kinda iffy..
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by Plasmo »

And don't forget the Dangun thing.
But actually, who cares?
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Re: GD: Garegga ranking system

Post by esreveR »

xris wrote:I dunno.. Saying you 1LC Garegga without understanding what's up, and asking if Ibara has invincibility in the same day. Seems kinda iffy..
Well, I was curious as to whether Ibara, being from a former Raizing employee, has all the dipswitches as Raizing/Toaplan games had, because if they did, there's got to be a sprite viewer somewhere, and even if it's not emulated, it would be funny to look at a sprite viewer, etc. I'm a bored person, okay ._. Also, 'invincibility' dipswitch, last I checked, allowed for level select and a bunch of other things (Slow?!, Pause!), which is interesting enough on its own. Maybe I'm too into how a game works, but maybe I'm also too bored to stop, either.

The next question I was going to ask was, is it better to save all your bombs except on the flamingoes part, in order to get the 1,000-point bonuses, or should I just use them on everything to grab medals/point bonuses? Because I would use them, but I'm not a bomb person, so it just feels wrong.
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